Re: process for workprocess cte

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

Jon wrote:
| [Eduardo.Gutentag@eng.sun.com:]
| 
| | General comment: In what follows you seem to make a
| | distinction between (all individual and institutional OASIS
| | members) on the one hand and (all employees of OASIS member
| | organizations) on the other, inasmuch as only the latter are
| | required to have a supervisor's signature. But
| | representatives from institutional OASIS members are as
| | constrained, I would think, as employees of Oasis member
| | organizations when it comes to travel budget, so I wonder
| | why you place the virtual parentheses that way instead of
| | individuals on one side and all others on the other side
| 
| Institutional membership is a kind of individual membership -- same
| cost, same benefits.  The difference is that *with proper
| notification* an institutional membership is transferable in case an
| individual holding the membership ceases to become available to
| participate on behalf of the institution.  The intended effect of this

Please let's get the official text sanctioned by the board before
we delve into the present membership rules further.  I can assure you
that no company I've worked for regards its membership as one held by
an individual.

| is to allow any organization to have a membership with individual
| benefits.  (I don't know how well the notification process is
| specified at the moment, but I do know that's how this is supposed to
| function.)

How do you know?  I sure can't figure that out from the public info,
  
  http://www.oasis-open.org/html/members.htm

| | I think the following should be added: "The anticipated
| | lifetime of the committee is [X] months, and a maintenance
| | committee is/is not foreseent at this time". I think the
| | person submitting the proposal should specify in the
| | proposal the anticipated lifetime of the committee.
| 
| This requirement has caused such an unbelievable amount of trouble in
| W3C work that we're starting to give up on it.  (I can't go into
| further detail because I don't know for a fact that all the people on
| this list are W3C members.)  

then we'll have to ignore that inaccessible experience.

| Both Eduardo Gutentag and David Singer
| have registered opinions to the contrary, but I maintain that in
| designing XML standards, 

please let's shift to "XML specifications" or "XML applications" to
avoid confusion with what the W3C thinks it's doing.

| the idea that you can force out a usable
| result by setting a date for completion can easily yield an
| illustration of Brooks's classic dictum about expecting nine women to
| have a baby in one month.

I think that's a non sequitur, but anyway, show me 9 women who tried, eh?

The W3C process may be broken in that it has not closed
committees that have not met their deliverables; the IETF requires
a schedule and expects it to be kept to.  Certainly estimating the 
period of time necessary to do the proposed work is a reasonable 
requirement, and essential if the member's supervisor is to commit
money to the task.

regards, Terry